Tribune des Arts - A. Lange & Söhne Special Issue - June 2010 
Interested aficionados with a prior appointment are cordially invited to do just that. And afterwards, there can be no doubt that here, extraordinarily qualified staff members craft exceptional wristwatches at the pinnacles of craftsmanship and technology, lever-aging ingenuity, passion, and rich talent. Obviously, the 21st century manifests itself at A. Lange & Söhne in the form of fast computers and CNC machining centres as well. But the sole purpose of these resources is to enhance flawlessness and, above all, precision in the domain of exclusive horological artisanship. Family traditions and nobility constitute a commitment as well. Design, engineering, completion, and lifelong service are inspired by the ambitious expectations of a discerning clientele. This simple principle was stipulated by Ferdinand A. Lange 165 years ago. There is no reason today to abandon it.
Values, nothing but values
Unquestionably, wristwatches that bear the A. Lange & Söhne signature cost quite a lot. But they are no doubt worth every cent of the investment. This is where the question regarding values arises – those that are not necessarily visible at first sight when taking an unbiased look at an A. Lange & Söhne wristwatch. A second look and many further contemplative inspections will reveal a plethora of interesting details concerning value and certainly, above all, value addition in Glashütte.
Needless to say, underlying value relates to a large, tradition-observing family of watchmakers. Connoisseurs know what is to be expected of A. Lange & Söhne. For example that the cases and strap buckles are always either solid gold or solid platinum. Gold or blued-steel hands complement the solid-gold markers on solid-silver dials.
In 2010, A. Lange & Söhne is offering a bit of honey embedded in three watches of an anniversary edition. Thanks to a totally new case material for which a patent was granted, they radiate a most unusual gloss. True to the precious-metals-only dictate for Lange timepiece cases, it is gold – a singular gold alloy that exhibits an exclusive hue. Which brings us back to honey, because the term “honey-coloured gold” is indeed a very apt description. But there is much more to be said about this novel blend of elements. It is self-understood that A. Lange & Söhne uses only gold with a fineness of 750/1000. In this respect, 18-carat white gold without any admixture of palladium, nickel, or silver is the point of departure. The scintillating honey hue is due to the carefully balanced addition of small amounts of copper, zinc, and manganese. What is more, a special thermal process is applied to harden this new precious metal to about 320 Vickers, roughly twice as much as ordinary gold. These are the hard facts concerning Lange's honey-coloured gold.
The manufactory uses only German silver, a comparatively expensive alloy of copper, zinc, and nickel, for the plates, bridges, and cocks of the movements. Contrary to brass, the alloy requires no electroplating or other aftertreatment. Moreover, the classic, understated design of all timepieces, the exclusive architecture of the manufacture movements, and the service pledge that extends far into the future are genuine values because they promise longevity.
And this brings us to value addition which is created largely by Lange. The vast majority of all watch components in a Lange timepiece are produced in the manufactory. Lange's experts are also responsible for the twofold assembly of all movements, without exception, the manual finissage of all components, the freehand engraving of the balance cock, the meticulous adjustment of each watch in the five standard and further intermediate positions, and the final in-depth quality inspection. Only after all these processes have been completed will the watches embark on their journey to impatiently waiting authorised dealers all over the world. Obviously, the work involved in the making of such watches is not commensurate with large numbers. And this points to another value: people who own an A. Lange & Söhne watch are members of an elite community in which only the best is good enough. These people are akin to Oscar Wilde who once remarked that he was too poor to be able to afford cheap products.
Craftsmanship in a big way
Many watch manufacturers refer to craftsman- ship, but only very few of them rely on it as intensively as A. Lange & Söhne. At the Glashütte manufactory, the vigilant preservation and application of manual skills is among the irrevocable maxims upheld from the very beginning by Ferdinand A. Lange. Relative to the comparatively small number of Lange time-pieces crafted by the manufactory, it employs an exceptionally large workforce of watchmakers – both women and men. Each component actually passes through their hands multiple times. The parts that are manufactured with high precision are manually deburred and then joined to constitute a functioning whole during the first assembly pass. Subsequently, the ticking microcosm is totally taken apart again for the component finissage processes, which are all performed by hand. It is only the second assembly procedure, called remontage, that ultimately results in what presents itself through a sapphire-crystal caseback and needs shun no scrutiny with a watchmaker's loupe.
A polished presence: Lange finishes
He is known by his original personnel number 006, and in-house at Lange, that already means a lot. It was 1991 when Maik Pfeifer joined A. Lange & Söhne in the second year of the new era. “In those days,” admits the watchmaker with his typical boyish grin, “finissage was an obscure Gallicism in Glashütte. We built good and dependable movements, but any decoration beyond what was absolutely indispensable was considered to be an outcrop of capitalism.” So the first employee of the new Finish department – exceptionally important with respect to luxury watches – literally began at square one. Once consummately mastered in Glashütte, grinding, chamfering, and polishing techniques had faded into oblivion during the socialist regime. Consequently, Maik Pfeifer had to learn everything from the bottom up. “It wasn't a bowl of cherries. At that time, I would have preferred to take on virtually any other kind of work.” But Walter Lange, Günter Blümlein, and Hartmut Knothe – Lange's the first operations manager – were adamant perfectionists. So for Pfeifer, now 44, there was no option but to grin and bear it.
He was allowed to practice on steel parts that had been brought to Glashütte from IWC in Switzerland by Kurt Kerber whose untimely death in 1993 came as a shock to the Lange team. Pfeifer's only resources were a wooden disc, also imported, a book about flat polishing techniques, his own private lathe, and a screw-head polishing machine on loan from a colleague. After that, there was no stopping. Perseverance, Saxon patience and thoroughness, and untamed enthusiasm for experiments resulted in a finish without peer that today is applied by some fifty specialists in the Lange manufactory on a daily basis. One of them is Marlies Fraulob whose love of artisanal perfection cannot be overlooked. Thanks to intensive coaching by Maik Pfeifer, the 1994 new hire now masters all of the refined facets of decoration. And she is pursuing them with growing passion. “There's no cherrypicking here. Each of us should be proficient in all techniques of horological finissage.” Just as categorically, all components must submit to the time-consuming procedures for which they are earmarked: Glashütte ribbing on the three-quarter plate, bridges, and cocks, circumferential brushing for vertical edges, specular polish for certain steel parts, perlage on both sides of the plates, bright polish for bevelled edges, flat polish on chatons, solarisation on larger wheels, straight graining for steel parts, and circular graining for specific wheels. Additionally, the teeth of all wheels are precision-finished.
At Lange, hardly any part remains “untouched”. And because resting on one's laurels would mean regression, Maik Pfeifer keeps conceiving new polishing techniques such as the stunning circular decoration on the plates of this year's Homage collection. He has not only been rising to the occasion with his artistry, he adores it, as is easy to see through a magnifying glass.
In-depth work: Lange engravings
Simone Rauchfuss always has a twinkle in her eyes, even though what the trained watchmaker and goldsmith does at A. Lange & Söhne is decidedly earnest. She joined the manufactory in 1997, but her current career began roughly seven years ago when Helmut Wagner asked her to switch to the engraving studio. After nine months of intensive learning, she finally had the opportunity to transform a balance cock into an absolute original with her signature. Of course, it is imparted manually, with a set of burins. The woman with the talented hands does not need a template. She knows the patterns of the balance cocks of all Lange calibres by heart. Nonetheless, each one varies a little bit from the others. When the instructor of the in-house Tai chi sports group refers to the much more challenging case engravings, her eyes really light up. She already has one artistically decorated case-back to her credit, and currently, she is applying her inimitable style of engraving to a half-hunter case. Simone Rauchfuss is proud of the fact that she was chosen for this exacting mission. Why she was picked is a question that she modestly leaves unanswered.
Diminutive but consequential: the Lange balance spring
Richard Lange, the eldest son of Ferdinand A. Lange, can legitimately be called a creative mind. He had a knack for harnessing the scientific insights of his day for the purposes of horological progress. In the late 1920s, Richard Lange realised that adding beryllium to nickel-steel alloys not only perceptibly reduced the sensitivity of the all-crucial balance spring to temperature fluctuations and magnetic fields but also made it more elastic and harder than the Elinvar springs that had been commonplace until then. The results of these considerations that culminated in a patent in 1930 are still relevant in the watch industry today. Unfortunately, the inventor could not reap the fruit of his efforts. He died only two years later.
At Lange Uhren, his legacy lives on in the production of tiny balance springs that weigh only about 2.5 milligrammes and are coiled from alloyed steel strip with a thickness between one and three hundredths of a millimetre. Without the resilience of this spring, there would be no tick-tock. The balance wheel to which it is connected would simply stand still. No wonder that the balance spring is considered to be the “soul” of a mechanical movement. As was the case in Richard Lange's day, the basic Nivarox material – the name stands for non-variable, non-oxidising – is alloyed from iron, nickel, and chromium with the admixture of beryllium and other constituents. This mix is the ideal partner for monometallic balance wheels crafted from Glucydur, an alloy of copper and beryllium.
A. Lange & Söhne has been studying this intricate field for some 15 years now. The production methods are far away from high- tech. Ancient machines and traditional craftsmanship dominate the work performed on the basis of elaborate processes that are strictly monitored by Lutz Grossmann, 50, and Reiner Kocarek, 65. First, the Nivarox wire is drawn down to a thickness of 0.05 millimetres. Then, it is rolled to flat strips typically measuring 0.09 x 0.018 millimetres. The next steps are cutting to length, coiling, thermal treatment, and the separation of the balance springs. Finally, they are pinned to their collets and thoroughly cleaned. Of course, this long process is accompanied by a host of inspection procedures. Finally, the balance spring is mated with a matching balance wheel. After painstaking adjustments, the ensemble is integrated in a manufacture calibre where it generates the oscillations that stand for precise timing at A. Lange & Söhne.
Incidentally, silicon – the innovative material that is all the rage at the moment – is not a topic at A. Lange & Söhne, at least not in conjunction with balance springs. “In this respect, we uphold the tradition of Ferdinand A. Lange,” emphasises Lutz Grossmann, “and that's not about to change in the 21st century.”
A chronometric torture chamber: the Lange test laboratory
At A. Lange & Söhne, there's no way around Christoph Schlencker, 42, and his five watchmakers. No one would dream of launching a new watch, not to mention bringing it to market, without his explicit approval. In Glashütte, he heads up the test laboratory that in many ways resembles a mechanical alchemist's lair. This is no doubt one of the most important functions in the venerable manufactory. The watchmaker and his hand-picked team make the boom-or-bust decision for every new creation because it must succumb to gruelling quality-assessing maltreatment behind closed doors. No mercy is granted because life is usually pitiless as well for A. Lange & Söhne watches in the real world. Everything, without exception, is tested, from the frame parts of a new calibre to its soul, the oscillation and escapement system. Because the Saxons are much stricter with their subjects than the Swiss testing institute Chronofiable, for instance, Christoph Schlencker has to develop machines for the lab if they are not commercially available. One case in point is the apparatus that records the rate and amplitude behaviour of the balance wheel and its hair-spring in a total of ten positions. At the end of such field tests, it is absolutely conceivable that a totally new balance spring might be needed if the candidate submitted for appraisal did not live up to his uncompromising expectations.
Of course, the offspring of a long-established family of watchmakers does not keep his differentiated insights into the stress behaviour of components and calibres to himself. The contrary is true. The engineering department is apprised of all details, for example when a chronograph mechanism fails to complete the sequence of 50,000 start, stop, and reset operations or when a Zeitwerk falls victim to the hammer test that simulates an acceleration of 5,000 g. “We can and must learn from mistakes,” muses Christoph Schlencker, who has no qualms whatsoever about exposing intricate mechanical assemblies to no fewer than 345,000 random blows in a heavy-duty vibrator box.
He even smiles with impish delight when he compares this torture with “mountain bike, downhill”, the worst that can happen to a mechanical wrist-watch. “Teeing off on the golf course is negligible by comparison.” The quality guardian's curriculum also includes systematic ageing tests, because at Lange, everyone wants to know whether a given component will keep working even after many years or might be a potential cause of annoyance for the customer. The father of three children is a tinkerer at heart in his spare time as well. When examining an old vacuum tube radio, he discovered reciprocally sprung gear wheels for the backlash-free operation of a rotary potentiometer. His finding ended up on the desk of Burkhard Geyer, who used it to develop the ingenious train that drives the Richard Lange sweep seconds hand. At A. Lange & Söhne, people work hand in hand. True to tradition, they all want only the very best for their manufactory.
